Grünen Kapitalismus - Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung

porate management, namely by arguing that a relatively modest investment
undertaken at the present time – in green measures – could ward
off catastrophic financial losses in the future. The study is quite candid
about its intent not to demand too great a “sacrifice” from the business
community. Among the various possible scenarios of greenhouse-gas
(GHG) reduction, it therefore recommends as “consistent with economic
growth” (2007, 234) an emissions-stabilization target of 550 partsper-million
of CO2 – compared to the 350 ppm target (a reduction from
the slightly-below-400 ppm current level) recommended by the UN Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change. 187 The Stern study itself includes
data (table, 2007, 16) showing that its “acceptable” target would
result in a global average temperature-rise, by 2050, in excess of the 1ºC
increase of the past few decades, whose consequences have already been
cause for alarm.
The ideology which makes the persistence of capitalist priorities so
tenacious, even in the context of calls for “green revolution,” finds
quintessential expression in the writing of New York Times columnist
Thomas L. Friedman, whose latest book (2008) includes such a call in
its subtitle. He writes:
… the green revolution is first and foremost an innovation challenge –
not a regulation challenge….
We are not going to regulate our way out of the problems of the Energy-
Climate Era. We can only innovate our way out, and the only way to do
that is to mobilize the most effecttive and prolific system for transformational
innovation and commercialization ever created on the face of the
earth – the U.S. marketplace. There is only one thing bigger than Mother
Nature and that is Father Profit, and we have not even begun to enlist
him in this struggle. (Friedman 2008, 243 f)
Friedman’s treatise also includes, notably, a long paragraph (193f) in
which he magnanimously reminds American consumers of all the extravagances
that his proposed green revolution will not require them to
187 For a critique of the Stern Review, see Foster et al. 2008, 3-6. The restoration of a 350
ppm level has become a central goal of the international movement to stabilize the environment:
www.350.org/. Stern has more recently adjusted his benchmark to from
550 to 500 ppm, arguing, however, that any deeper cutback would be economically unacceptable
(2009, 180).
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